Red Dead Online’s ‘Broken Economy’ Could Be One Of Rockstar’s Most Expensive Mistakes

Red Dead Online might be impressing the hell out of most fans right now, but it turns out it could become a pretty expensive mistake for Rockstar Games…

Credit: Rockstar Games

Forbes has investigated the cost of pretty much everything in RDO, and it’s found that making money in the game is so long-winded it could take “several dozen or a hundred hours” to earn yourself as little as one gold bar.

If you haven’t played RDO yet, there’s two monetary tiers right now – you can earn cash and gold bars. A typical mission could earn you about $4, or potentially around 0.01 of a gold bar. In theory, you could sink hours into the game without earning so much as a gold bar.

Credit: Rockstar Games

The bad news with that is that in the RDR2 campaign it was a lot easier to bring in the dollar, but Rockstar hasn’t changed the prices of its weapons and extras. What could take 20m to earn in RDR2 now could take up your whole weekend, but the reward stays the same, begging the question – is it worth the effort?

It’s not just things like weapons that you can buy either, as RDO has unavoidable costs for the upkeep of your stables and camps, meaning the grind is seriously real.

Money can be hard to come by and the gold bar system is really skewed. 5 bars for horse insurance but you get .01 to .03 bars per race or series. #RedDeadOnline

Forbes speculates that such a difficult and unrewarding in-game economy is going to turn people off Red Dead whilst it’s still in beta, potentially losing them some serious money. I mean, look how much GTA Online has pulled in for the company…

Credit: Rockstar Games

Over on Twitter, people are sounding off against the “broken” economy – and they’re already turning the game off.

@rockstargames To paint a single gun all black costs 12 gold bars. According to IGN grinding for 1 gold bar could take 8 hours.That’s 96 hours of grinding to paint a single item.This is the state of Red Dead Redemption 2 Online. So much pride and accomplishment it’s overwhelming